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Is Internet Network Marketing Dead?

2009-11-06T13:22:00.002-05:00

Last week I got an email from Mike Dillard of the Magnetic Sponsoring Fame and I had to laugh when I saw it. The subject of the email was "Is our future (gasp!) Offline?"

The reason why I laughed was because of who was sending me the email. Here is what Mike Dillard has to say on his website advertising his book...

Look, here's the cold, hard truth you won't hear at the Thursday night MLM meetings or in your company's literature:

In the Internet age...

The "Old School" Prospecting Methods Will Kill
Your Chances Of Making Any Real Money In MLM.

In fact, using those "dinosaur" MLM tactics is like trying to fill a leaking bucket.

Then when I read my email, here is what he has to say regarding baby boomers interested in joining the MLM profession...

They don't know how to market online - at all. And they don't really want to... Ever.

And I can't say that I blame them.

They've done quite well for themselves using the people skills they've acquired over the last 40 years. The thought of spending the next 12+ months mastering PPC, HTML, and copywriting doesn't sound like the same kind of fun that it does for us in the "Nintendo Generation", nor will it allow them to reach their financial goals immediately.

Frankly, they're better off using "old-school" prospecting techniques, and so are most of their friends in the "baby-boomer" generation. That's what they know.

This is what I have been saying for the longest on this blog. Internet marketing strategies are great. However, they will NEVER replace traditional network marketing strategies and tactics. The bottom line is that the VAST majority of top income earners did it using traditional network marketing strategies.

It is also a fact that most of the leaders these days are advocating a DUAL approach where you combine BOTH traditional strategies as well as internet based strategies.

Here is a great article that puts things in the proper prospective Internet Network Marketing Recruiting – Is This The End Of The Road?

If you are interested in a great free report that combines both traditional network marketing strategies with internet based strategies to help you build your contact list, make sure you download the Endless Streams Of Prospects report today!

How To Expose People You Meet To Your MLM Opportunity

2009-10-29T19:27:00.002-04:00

I'm actually at my house trying to finish up some last minute work before I get ready to watch game two of the world series. While at home, I was presented with a great opportunity to expose someone to my MLM opportunity.

Today, I am going to quickly share with you my experience and show you how you can apply this to your own business. With all the focus on building a network marketing business on the internet, calling leads and so on, a lot of us are missing out on some great prospects that we can share our opportunity with.

Anyway, my doorbell rings. I look out the window and there's a gentleman at the door that I didn't recognize. I open the door and he asks if Mr. Cooper is home. I told him I am Mr. Cooper. He explains to me that he wanted to drop by to talk to me about a particular candidate that is running for office in my neighborhood.

So we're talking about the candidate for a couple of minutes. He asked me whether I was prepared to vote for him. I told him that I'm leaning towards his candidate but that I'm not decided yet. He also asked me that if I do vote for him would I select a particular party. I told him I would. I understand that game. The smaller parties outside of the big two here in the United States need as many votes as possible because it influences their funding.

Anyway, he thanks me for my time and begins to walk away. Before he left, I called him back and said...

"By the way, I'm just curious since you're already here, I'd thought I'd ask you...do you keep your income options open?"

He said "yes."

I said "Great, hold on a second, I got something for you..."

I ran upstairs and got one of my DVDs that I use to promote my MLM opportunity. I came back down and handed it to him. I then said..."

"This may or may not be for you, but I'm doing well with this opportunity and I am just looking to promote this to as many people in the community as possible."

I handed him the DVD and then said "What's the best phone number I can reach you at?"

He gave me his phone number and thanked me for giving him the DVD. I then closed the door and went on about my business.

Now mind you, I didn't do this exposure as smoothly as I would have liked to do. In fact, I almost completely forgot to expose him at all. Normally, what I like to do is ask them "If I gave you this DVD would you look at it?" I also like to find out when they can look at it, confirm that they would have looked at it if I call them at a time after that and then get their phone number. Eric Worre does a great training on this technique that you can check out if you are interested.

Despite the fact that this wasn't one of my best exposures, the bottom line is a bad exposure is always better than no exposure at all. When I call this guy back, he might be completely excited, I recruit him and he becomes one of the next success stories in my MLM business. Or maybe he doesn't do much, but he leads me to someone who becomes the next success story.

Now notice, I didn't go out to the mall looking for people to expose. I met this guy during my regular routine and activity and was able to expose him to my business in the moment. Those are the types of exposures that I believe are the best, because they are authentic and you come across like you're doing them a favor as oppose to them doing you a favor.

So think about all the ways you can get these types of exposures during the course of your daily routine and activity. Such as...

a) You are having breakfast, lunch or dinner at a restaurant where you are being served by a waiter.
b) A telemarketer calls you to sell you something.
c) Someone stops to ask you for directions.
d) You are in the supermarket and you ask someone if they know where they keep the eggs.
e) You are at the gas station and you stop to talk to the guy on the other side of the pump.
f) And more...

Some of you could have so many prospects just from this one technique that you won't ever have to do anything else. For others, this could just be a strategy you can add on top of anything else you are doing because it only takes an extra 60 seconds to do this.

So don't forget to take advantage of "In The Moment" MLM prospecting. You never know who you might be missing out on if you are not doing this.

Also, this little strategy is only one of SEVEN strategies that I personally use to build an endless amount of prospects that I can expose to my MLM opportunity. In fact, I have so many prospects, I honestly do not have the time to call them all. Some of my prospecting efforts are even residual, which means I did something one time and I get prospects over and over and over again from that activity that I did ONCE!

If you would like to be able to do that as well, I highly recommend that you download my free report on the 7 Strategies To Build An Endless Stream of Prospects today!

Paul J Meyer Died Today - A True Icon & A Life Well Lived!

2009-10-26T16:41:00.004-04:00

PAUL J MEYER
May 21, 1928 - October 26, 2009

I was sad to hear that Paul J Meyer passed away early this morning. He was a gentleman that I really wanted to have the opportunity to meet because of the tremendous life that he lived and the impact that he has had on millions of people all around the world. He was 81 years old when he passed.

Born to immigrant parents from Germany, Paul is a classic example of the American success story. He started off his career in service to his country by serving in the military. After serving his country he moved on to insurance sales. My understanding is that he applied to well over 50 companies, being rejected by each and every one before finally being accepted by a company and given one of the worst territories. By the time he was only 27 years old, Paul was already a millionaire insurance agent and insurance broker.

However, it is his contributions to the personal development industry that Paul is most well known for. Many refer to him as the father of the personal development industry because he was one of the first people to produce audio versions of personal development. It was through a passion for personal development that Paul started his two personal development companies which are:

Success Motivation International, Inc

Leadership Management, Inc

A couple of years ago he also launched a publishing company known as Leading Edge Publishing Company, which publishes many of the books he has authored, including one of my favorites which is 24 Keys That Bring Complete Success (Fortune Family & Faith)

Paul was also a deeply religious man, unashamedly speaking about his personal relationship with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. However, what impresses me most about him is for all of his professional accomplishments they have not had a negative impact on his family life. Unfortunately when you read about most leaders who have earned the type of income this man has earned, they are usually divorced several times. Not Paul. He was married to his wife Jane for over 37 years and EVERY WEEK he sent flowers to his wife! Even more impressive is the fact that he has five children and 15 grandchildren. A lot of kids usually want to move far away from their parents. However, all five of Paul's children live within 2 hours or less driving distance away from him.

Paul J Meyer was also my upline in Pre-Paid Legal Services. Along with his daughter Leslie and his son in law, Kevin, they co-founded LK Marketing Group. This group is the #3 income earners in all of Pre-Paid Legal, earning well over 1.5 million dollars a year. A multi-millionaire many times over (last year Paul earned well over 100 million dollars for the year), Paul donates his half of Pre-Paid Legal commissions to religious ministries and charities all over the world.

Every year, Paul invites every distributor in the organization that has reached the Gold Executive Director position or above to his ranch in Waco, Texas for a leadership retreat. It was an event that I was looking forward to qualifying for in the future and having the opportunity to meet Paul in person.

I am so grateful that he has taken the opportunity to document so many of his philosophies and attitudes in books and tapes. Now that he is no longer here, I won't have the opportunity to meet him in person. However, I can still benefit from his years of knowledge and incredible success philosophy through his books and tapes.

Paul J Meyer - A great man, mentor, role model and a classic example of a life well lived. He will be missed!

I've included some links to some additional resources if you would like to learn more about this amazing man!

Read Paul J. Meyer’s Obituary

Paul J Meyer - What It Takes To Be A Winner - June/July Success Magazine 2009

MLM Training - Fear Of Failure? Fear Of Success? Part 1

2009-10-23T23:03:00.006-04:00

Why Overcoming Fear Of Failure and/or Fear Of Success Is The Most Important MLM Training Topic That You Have Likely Never Been Trained On!

You know what I find most interesting about MLM training? The large majority of the training resources available deal with how to build a MLM business. Everyone has their different philosophies and techniques on how to actually go about building a downline.

However, for the overwhelming majority of those of you reading this who have not achieved the success you want, the problem isn't you lack the how tos.

The how tos are so readily available, it's amazing. Do a search for mlm training at Google or your favorite search engine and you will find a host of websites and other resources teaching you how to build a downline.

Yet I bet if you look at all of those resources most, if not all of them deal with what I believe to be the NUMBER ONE reason why most MLM distributors fail to achieve the success they want in this industry.

It is because of an inability to overcome fear of failure, fear of success or in many cases both!

Overcoming The Fear Of Failure In Your MLM Business

Let's start with the fear of failure because this is the one that I believe I personally struggle with the most. A fear of failure is when you are afraid to do something because you believe that you will not get the result you are looking for.

So in the case of building a MLM business, a distributor is afraid to build the business because they are afraid that their efforts will not produce a successful downline organization. I believe one of the biggest contributors to the fear of failure is our education system.

We all know that in life one of the best ways to learn many principles is by trial and error. You cannot read a book on swimming or riding a bike. You only learn how to swim or ride a bike by trial and error.

However our school system actually punishes our kids for failing and making mistakes. They are taught that they must get good grades in school, else they won't be able to go to college. If they don't go to college they won't get a good job. If they don't get a good job they won't live a good life.

Fear of failure is simply the result of negative programming and misconceptions about success and failure.

How can you tell if you suffer from a fear of failure? Are you a sore loser or were you a sore loser as a kid? Are you a perfectionist and you feel that you cannot do anything until you have it down packed absolutely perfect? Do you constantly look back at your life to previous mistakes that you made and say to yourself "if only I would have done this, or if only I would have done that?" If so, you likely suffer from a fear of failure.

One of the best ways to overcome a fear of failure is by engaging in MASSIVE ACTION! Some people would have never learned how to swim unless someone didn't push them into the water where they had no choice but to sink or swim. This is the type of action that you need to take in order to get over a fear of failure in your MLM business.

Are you afraid of talking to prospects because you think no one will want to join you in your business? Then talk to a lot of prospects all at one time. If you absolutely cannot get over the fear to get yourself to start talking to prospects for your own business, go get a part time sales position immediately!

Many of the best distributors in the industry today were absolutely terrified to talk to prospects. However, after getting a part time job where they had to talk to lots of people, they were able to overcome their fear of failure through massive action.

If you need prospects to talk to, download my free MLM prospecting report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to generate endless amount of prospects for me and my business.

In part 2 I will talk about fear of success and how to overcome that fear.

The 5 Rules Of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business

2009-10-21T17:10:00.003-04:00

One of the biggest struggles that many network marketing business distributors deal with is trying to close out their prospects. It's amazing how many people are so terrified of asking for the sale or recruit.

One of my mentors in my upline talks about this all the time. He will do a three way call for one of the distributors on the team. The prospect is ready to go so he turns the call back over to the distributor. Out of curiosity he stays on the line to hear what happens next. Here is an example of how a typical conversation will go.

DISTRIBUTOR - Wow wasn't that great?

PROSPECT - Yeah, that was great!

DISTRIBUTOR - So...um...do you have any more questions?

Of course the person has more questions! They just made the decision to get started in a business that they absolutely know nothing about! In fact, they might not even know what questions they should be asking!

Now I want to clearly point out that closing is not about CONVINCING someone to join your business. I once heard it said that if you have to convince them to join, you are going to have to convince them to actually go out and work.

We need to stop making this business so complicated. The bottom line is as a network marketing distributor, our job is to give the prospect enough information about our products, services and business opportunity so that they can make an intelligent decision as far as whether this business opportunity is right for them or not. Our job is to then collect that decision.

If the opportunity is right for your prospect, they will decide to join with you. If the opportunity is not right for your prospect, they will decide not to join you. It as that simple.

Anyway, here is a great video training by MLM Trainer Doug Firebaugh on the 5 rules of closing in your network marketing business. This is a great video. Now I also recommend that you proceed closing out your prospect by doing a 3 way call with another experienced distributor in your network marketing organization.

And of course if you actually need some prospects to talk to, consider downloading my free mlm prospecting report that reveals the 7 strategies that I personally use to build my network marketing organization. Considering the fact that my organization continues to grow every single month whether I personally sponsor anyone or not, I think what I'm doing works pretty well.

Anyway, here is the Doug Firebaugh Video. If you are reading this on another website and you cannot see the video, visit my network marketing blog located at http://web204mlm.blogspot.com and look for the post entitled "The 5 Rules of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business'

You Already Know The Answers To Your MLM Success

2009-10-19T15:01:00.003-04:00

Recently I got an email from a distributor in a MLM company. This person wanted me to give them some advice that would help them take their business to the next level. I asked this person what do they think they need to do to take their business to the next level. They replied that they need to be more consistent in following the game plan provided by their company. Being familiar with their company and their game plan, I knew that this person's answer was an accurate one and told this person such.

Many of us in the industry find ourselves in the same boat. It doesn't matter whether you are relatively new to the industry, have been around, built a team but haven't been able to break through to that full time income, or whether you are stuck at six figures (not a bad place to be stuck at!) For the large majority of us, we already know the answers as far as what we have to do to be successful in our MLM business. The problem is we don't do what we know.

This business is not a very complicated business. It's not like we are search engine optimizers where we have to figure out the keyword ratio density and figure out how many inbound links we need to get into a website with what keywords to get listed in the search engines for the word or phrase we want. Unless of course, you are into the whole internet marketing/network marketing business model, but that's another story!

Here is network marketing in a nutshell...

1. You find people to network with.

2. You find people to market to.

3. You plug the interested people into a system that teaches them how to find people to network with and find people to market to.

I can almost guarantee you that each and every one of you either know how to do what you need to do to build your business or if you don't know, you at least know who you can go ask anything that you need help with. So the issue isn't not knowing how to do the business. The issue is you just aren't doing what you know.

So stop wasting your time trying to figure this business out. You don't need to listen to your company training CDs again for the 164th time before you go out and start building the business. There are only 4 things you need to do...

1. Set a goal.
2. Put together a plan to achieve that goal.
3. Execute on the plan.
4. Review your plan and execution and make tweaks until you achieve the goal. Then you start all over again back at step #1.

For most of us, regardless of whether we are stuck at broke, stuck at break even, stuck at small monthly profits, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly part time income, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly full time income or stuck at six figures, the reason why we are stuck is because we are either not goal setting, not working from a plan, not executing the plan we already put together or we are not reviewing it and making the necessary tweaks. It has very little to do with not knowing what we need to do.

I made money my first month in network marketing. I didn't know anything about attending local business overview events. I didn't know anything about getting on team training calls. I didn't know anything about attraction marketing, squeeze pages, funded proposals or any of that fancy internet stuff everybody is trying to teach us these days. All I knew is show this DVD to people and if they like it, have them fill out the application and check to see if the money got wired into my bank account the next business day!

We don't like to hear that it's a simple business. We want the business to be complicated. One of my mentors always says people don't like simplicity because there is nothing to hide behind if it's simple and it is so true. So stop complicating the business, get out there and go build an empire so you can leave a legacy for your children and your children's children!

If you really don't know the answers and you are stuck, go download my free report. It's free! It doesn't cost you a dime. I tell you exactly what I did so that I now have a database of thousands of prospects that I can tap into at any time with more being added on a daily basis. Do you think you would have more success if you had thousands of people you could contact? If so, go download my free report right now.

"But I'm afraid you are going to sell me something" you say? Of course I'm going to try to sell you something. This isn't charity, this is a for profit business. If you're afraid that you are going to be hypnotized by my masterful sales process then give your credit card to your spouse or a friend you trust for all I care before you download the free report. Just stop making excuses and take the action that you need to take to build a successful business.

Otherwise, if you are going to continue to procrastinate, you are going to be just like the people that Jeff Olson talked about in this TPN training. You are going to say "man I wish I had" instead of "gee I'm glad I did."

The TRUTH About Home Business Leads

2009-10-12T15:42:00.002-04:00

Are Home Business Leads A Good Way To Build A MLM Business?

There are a wide variety of opinions regarding the validity of home business leads when building your MLM downline. Some leaders swear by them as a fantastic way of building a business from home. Others feel that they are a waste of time and money. The question is who is correct?

The fact is, both of them are correct. I know a number of leaders who have generated and/or purchased leads of people interested in home businesses successfully. I know of other leaders who have dabbled with them, but simply didn't have the success they were looking for, so they moved on to other strategies for building a business.

First, you must understand that there are two different ways to generate these types of leads for your business. The first way is to purchase them from a leads vendor. The second way is to generate the leads on your own.

I do both and have done both throughout my entire almost five year career in the MLM industry. Here is what I have discovered as far as my experience with these two methods of lead generation.

The Truth About Purchasing Home Business Leads

Purchasing home business leads is the easiest way to get leads. All you have to do is come up with some money and you can have a steady stream of leads for your business. The problem that I found is that the quality of leads in my experience fall anywhere from ok and decent to flat out horrible and a waste of time.

The reason why is because of the way that lead generation companies use to get these leads for you. These companies participate in what is known as a CPA network or Cost Per Action network. These networks compensate website owners to place advertising on their web page. For each website visitor that completes a certain action (in this case, fills out a home business survey), the lead company pays the website a commission.

The problem with this approach is that it is very easy to manipulate the system. A website owner can play games with the system so that they can earn higher commissions. Some of them are just flat out unethical and will fill out fake names to generate commissions.

Others will offer incentives to get people to fill out the survey. For instance, they might say that anyone who fills out the survey will be entered into a drawing to receive a free laptop. With the incentive, the people filling out the survey may not actually be interested in an opportunity, they just want the free incentive.

Now there are some lead vendors that offer some pretty decent quality of leads. These are companies that rely mostly on their own advertising to generate their leads and use CPA networks to only supplement their marketing efforts.

A good example is Cutting Edge Media, who has a number of websites and magazines that they own that they can use as tools to generate leads for their clients. CEM produces a number of Home Business magazines and periodicals that they get out to hundreds of thousands of people a month. You'll pay $1 on the low end up to $5 on the high end. You are also going to need at least $100 to order a minimum number of leads.

Another company you can use is MLM Lead Specialist. Their leads aren't as good as Cutting Edge in my opinion. However, they are a lot cheaper and they do some specials all the time. I've gotten as many as 60 phone interviewed leads for $40. One of my business partners is one of the top 5 recruiters in her state in my company and this is the lead source that she uses.

The Truth About Generating Your Own Home Business Leads

Generating your own leads is definitely the way to go if you want to work a higher quality lead. It's even better if you are able to generate your own leads consisting of specifically people that are interested in the exact business opportunity that you are a part of.

This can be very expensive and/or time consuming. I remember, I was spending like $8 to $13 a lead off pay per click search engines. However for me it was worth it because I was converting them at a profit and I was able to talk to less people then I would have to if I was buying business opportunity leads and get retail customers and new business partners.

The challenge with generating your own leads is that it requires a new set of skills. These are skills that go above and beyond the set of skills you already need to actually acquire new retail customers and distributors for your business opportunity.

To generate your own leads, you will need to learn how to set up lead capture pages. You will need to learn what things like "conversion ratios" and "click through rates" are. Most importantly, you will need to learn how to generate traffic to your website so that you can get leads to begin with.

What I do like though about generating my own leads is that I don't have to worry about them being "surveyed" to death. This is when the person who is the lead fills out a bunch of surveys and gets a bunch of phone calls from a bunch of unprofessional MLM distributors that have no clue how to work leads effectively and vomit all over the prospects with their opportunity. Generally, a lead that I generated is usually filling out my lead capture form only at that point in time.

Another benefit that I like about generating my own leads is that you can replace financial equity with sweat equity. This means that even if you don't have any money, you can make up in work effort and know how what you lack in cash.

I also like the fact that many of the techniques that I use to capture leads have what I like to refer to as a residual effect. What this means is that I do that activity one time and it generates leads for me forever.

For instance, I wrote an article back in April. Since then I have had over 1000 people read that ONE article and I have had hundreds of people visit my website, some of which resulted in free leads for my business opportunity. These visitors continue to come into my website on a daily basis just from that article that I wrote one time!

Try going to your leads vendor and telling them you want to pay one time and get leads every single month for the life of your network marketing business. It simply doesn't exist.

Finally, most lead vendors that you purchase leads from will replace leads that you buy in cases where you have someone that puts in the wrong phone number or fake information. When you generate your own leads you are on your own in this area and you would be amazed at how many people actually put in fake information, especially phone numbers.

So in conclusion home business leads do work. However, you need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages. That said, they certainly aren't the ONLY way to find prospects for your business opportunity. I know many leaders who have build wildly successful businesses without ever having to purchase a lead and without ever having to generate their own leads online.

In fact leads is only one aspect to my business. I have actually identified 7 strategies that I've personally used over the years to generate thousands of contacts for me to talk to about my business opportunity. If you are interested in learning more visit my website and download my free MLM prospecting report today!

FTC Testimonial & Blogging Changes For MLM Distributors

2009-10-07T15:45:00.003-04:00

On Monday, the United States Federal Trade Commission (known as the FTC) released a press release providing guidance for advertisers who make endorsements and testimonials. I already knew this was coming, which is why for my longtime readers on this blog, you saw that I added the disclosure that I do get paid on many of the links on my blog.

Today I want to share with you my opinion on how this effects you as a MLM distributor. Keep in mind this is my opinion. I am not an attorney or a legal expert of any type. In fact, I recommend that you consult with an attorney if you are concerned that you could be in violation of these guidelines. That is why I am a member and independent associate of Pre-Paid Legal Services, so when issues like this happen, I can get the legal consultation that I want and I can get paid to share these services with others.

Here is a link to the guidelines:

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Here is my commentary on how I believe this affects MLM distributors. I am purposely writing this prior to my conversation with my attorney because I do not want this to be construed as legal advice.

The first area of these guidelines deal with endorsements. If you make a positive statement about a product or service, it is likely that this is considered an endorsement if you are compensated in any way, shape or form by the company that produces that product or service.

Here is a statement found in the guide regarding determining whether someone is making an endorsement...

"The Commission does not believe that all uses of new consumer-generated media to discuss product attributes or consumer experiences should be deemed “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides. Rather, in analyzing statements made via these new media, the fundamental question is whether, viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and therefore an “advertising message.” In other words, in disseminating positive statements about a product or service, is the speaker: (1) acting solely independently, in which case there is no endorsement, or (2) acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent, such that the speaker’s statement is an “endorsement” that is part of an overall marketing campaign?"

For example, let's say you are a distributor for MonaVie and I am not. You write on your blog "MonaVie Pulse is the best tasting health drink that I have ever had!" I also write the same thing on my blog.

In my case, I am acting solely independently because I have no affiliation whatsoever with MonaVie. I am not making an endorsement. I am just sharing my opinion on the product.

In your case, you are an independent distributor with the company. That means you are acting on behalf of MonaVie, as well as your own independent distributorship. What you are doing is making an endorsement that is a part of your marketing campaign to get people to sign up for MonaVie.

So the bottom line is do you get some type of benefit from the company, whether it is you are paid money or you receive free products

In fact, look what it says here...

'For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs." (emphasis mine)

So how does this affect you as a MLM distributor? If you make a positive statement online about your company's products and services and you are a distributor with that company, you must disclose that fact to your audience. Failure to do so could put you in violation of the FTC guidelines.

The other part of this deals with testimonials. Any testimonial that illustrates a performance or result that is attributed to the product or service falls under these guidelines. For example, let's say you use the Herbalife Shapeworks product and you lost 25 pounds on that program. You cannot just post in an ad or on your blog that you lost 25 pounds on the Herbalife program and leave it at that.

In order to use a performance based testimonial, you must do one of the following:

a) Provide information on what the "typical" customer using the product would experience. For example, you can do a trial where you have a certain number of people try the Herbalife Shapeworks program for a specific period of time. At the end of the time, you can ask the customers how much weight they loss and then establish the average as what the typical customer can expect to experience.

b) Limit the circumstances depicted in the advertisement. For example, if you disclose in the ad that in addition to Herbalife, you were exercising for 90 minutes a day and that you made specific changes to your diet, you can then use that testimonial.

Otherwise, it is best that you avoid specific performance based testimonials and stick to testimonials that do not make a specific performance claim. So for instance you can say that Herbalife Shapeworks is the "best diet program you have ever been on."

Based on my understanding of these guidelines, my assumption is that the testimonial rule also applies to the live opportunity meetings and live company overview calls that we as MLM distributors have. So for instance, if at an opportunity meeting, you have a distributor come up and say "In my first 30 days I was able to make an extra $1000." that would be considered a performance based testimonial and would have to be backed up with supporting information in order to not be in violation with FTC guidelines.

As you see, these rulings have a major impact on the way we do business as MLM distributors. I highly recommend that you take a look at the guidelines produced by the FTC on the website I linked to above. On that website, there is a guide in PDF format that you can click on to read and receive more clarification on these guidelines.

I know of a person who got into trouble with the FTC. It wasn't pretty, but he learned a lot from it. He's not a MLM distributor, but his story does offer insights that we as distributors can learn from. To read the story check out Frank Kern FTC: What's it's like to get sued by the FTC. I will warn you Frank is a "colorful" character to put it lightly so if you are easily offended, you may not want to visit his blog and read his story.

How Robert Kiyosaki Can Help You Build Your MLM Business

2009-09-28T16:03:00.001-04:00

What if there was a way that you could leverage the awesome marketing power of Robert Kiyosaki and the Rich Dad brand to build your MLM business? Would that be something you would be interested in doing?

While this strategy isn't one of the 7 strategies that I personally use to build an endless stream of prospects for my MLM business, I know of a number of successful distributors who use this strategy. They don't just restrict themselves to Robert Kiyosaki either.

So how does this strategy work?

Robert Kiyosaki has a company called "Rich Dad Education." It is a partnership with a company known as Whitney Information Network. WIN offers training and education on a wide variety of topics including real estate investment, stock market investment and other business and investing strategies.

Under the brand of Rich Dad Education, they offer free workshops all across the world for free. Their main workshop is called Learn To Be Rich and it is a 2 hour class that teaches you how to put the lessons of Rich Dad Poor Dad into action.

You can learn more about Rich Dad Education and their free workshop by visiting their Rich Dad Education website.

So what does this have to do with you and your business?

Think about it. You are involved in the network marketing industry. Your best prospect is someone who is interested in improving their financial lives. Now you could talk to random people on the street and at the mall and hope that you come across the right person. In fact, I can pretty much assure you that if you talk to enough people, you would come across the right people.

However, what if there was a way to get in one room where the chances of encountering the right people dramatically increases? That is what you have here at a Rich Dad Education event.

So here is the strategy. What you want to do is go to the event. Bring your notebook and your pen and prepare to take good notes. Part of the fundamentals of building a successful network marketing business is committing to personal development and an event like this is a great way to continue your personal development.

What you want to do is meet as many people as possible at this event. At the very least, you should be able to meet 4 people. The person in front of you, behind you, on the left hand side of you and on the right hand side of you.

Your goal is NOT to TRY AND PITCH THEM on your business right then and there. I'm not sure what the seminar's policy is but many of these events have a no recruiting policy and that is a great way to get kicked out.

Instead, all you want to do is find out more about the people you meet. What do they do for a living? How long have they been doing it? What prompted them to attend the seminar? Questions like that.

If you like the answers that you receive, ask the people you meet if they have a business card. If they do, get it from them. If not, get their name and contact information so you can follow up with them later on.

The free seminar will probably have a pitch to attend a several day seminar in which you will have to pay to attend. You can choose for yourself if you want to attend that seminar or not. If the money isn't going to take food on the table, I recommend that you do take the course. The worst thing that will happen is you will learn something. The best thing that happens is you learn something and you meet more people who could potentially join your business.

I will tell you this...you will likely have an even better class of prospects at the paid seminar because these are people who have clearly indicated that they are willing to invest in their own personal development. In fact, one of my good friends in the industry, who earns in excess of $100,000 a year in commissions from his MLM business recruited his #1 leader at a paid seminar.

Keep in mind, this strategy can be used not just for Robert Kiyosaki. You can use this strategy for ANY company that uses a seminar business model to teach people strategies and techniques to improve their financial situation. Companies such as Trump University, Peak Potentials and so on.

Once you have their contact information, now you can follow up with your contacts. Introduce yourself. Remind them that you met at the seminar. Complement them. Then ask them a question that will let you know if they "keep their financial options open?" If they do, you can expose them to your opportunity.

Utilizing this strategy is a great way to find quality prospects for your MLM business. So why not let Robert Kiyosaki use his advertising dollars to promote the seminar and then you leverage the power of that advertising to build your own MLM business?

Multi Level Marketing Companies

2009-09-23T15:03:00.002-04:00

If you look on the internet, there is a lot of confusion about multi level marketing companies. Some people don't understand what they are. Some people don't understand whether they are a scam or not. Many people don't understand how they work. Also many people don't understand what it takes to build one successfully.

There are many different marketing strategies that a business can use to grow its revenue base. This business model consists of the company recruiting a team of independent sales distributors. The distributors either earn a commission for the sale of the product or they earn retail profits when they purchase the products wholesale and sell them retail.

What makes this business model different from other sales commission structures is that the independent sales distributors can also recruit distributors as a part of their organization. Whenever those distributors buy products wholesale or earn a commission for the sale of the product, the distributor that recruited them has the opportunity to earn an override commission.

Depending on the structure of the compensation plan, distributors that are a part of Multi Level Marketing companies can earn on multiple levels of sales.

As for the legality of these companies, in the United States that are completely legal. In fact, there was a court case that settled this issue by the Federal Trade Commission back in the late 70s. After several years it was ruled that multi level marketing is a legitimate business opportunity.

Known as The Amway Safeguard Rules because Amway was the company that was challenged, these rules define the difference between legitimate multi level marketing companies and illegal pyramid schemes. You can learn more about this by reading about The Landmark Amway Case as well as reading the Amway vs FTC decision.

Some people use the pyramid structure of these companies to argue that it is not a legitimate business opportunity. They argue that if you get 3 who get 3 and so on, eventually you are going to run out of people to recruit into the opportunity and saturate the market. This is simplistic thinking at best.

Do you have a refrigerator in your house? You probably do. Does everybody you know have a refrigerator in their house? They probably do as well. So why is it that stores still sell refrigerators if you have one and practically everyone you know has one? Shouldn't refrigerators be saturated by now?

What these saturation theory's fail to factor in is several elements.

1. I might move to a new house that doesn't have a refrigerator. Now I need to buy one.
2. My refrigerator may break. That means I now need to buy another one.
3. I may not see the value of a refrigerator at first. However, in the future I change my mind and see the value in it and now I buy one.
4. When I have kids and they move out and live on their own, they may also face scenario 1 and/or 2 and buy another refrigerator.

This is true for cable television, cellular phones and multi level marketing companies and the business opportunities that they offer.

Finally, what does it take to be successful in building a distributorship with multi level marketing companies? Many people point to things such as the "average distributor check" which is usually a low number to justify why the business model is not legit.

According to a survey done by the Direct Sales Association 66% of distributors work less than 9 hours a week. 43% work less than 5 hours a week. So of course the average is going to be low. Instead of worrying about what the average people are doing, you should want to know what the top people are doing. If you do what the top people are doing, you can have what the top people are experiencing.

In studying some of the top distributors, I have found that although many of them have different systems in place, they all have several things in common...

1. They consistently expose new people to their products, services and opportunity and help their team of distributors do the same.

2. They have a system in place that allows their team to get trained on how to do the business.

3. They commit to a process of personal development by reading self development books, listening to/watching self development audios & videos and attending live self development events.

I have analyzed hundreds of multi level marketing companies and if you are interested you can learn more about the company that I have decided is the best business opportunity for me. If you are currently involved in a company, feel free to download my free report, which reveals the 7 strategies that I use to find prospects to talk to about my business.

The Truth About Downline Building

2009-09-22T15:30:00.002-04:00

If you want to be successful in network marketing you have to master the fundamentals of downline building. It is the key to achieving passive and residual income.

You can earn great money retailing your network marketing company's product. In my network marketing company, we have distributors who earn a full time, in some cases even a six figure income, just from the commissions that they earn retailing the product. However, that type of income is what is known as earned income. This means that you have to personally do something in order to be able to earn that income.

When I host a network marketing business opportunity meeting, I like to refer to this type of income as "roll out" income. What this means is that you have to roll out of your bed and do some work in order to make this income. While it is nice to earn this income, I didn't get started in this industry because of this type of income. I got started because I wanted to make money even if I wasn't the one personally making the sales.

To get to that point in your business you have to become good at downline building. What this means is that you have mastered the art and science of recruiting new distributors into your organization. However, more important than that, you have mastered the art and science of teaching those new distributors how to recruit and teaching them how to teach their new distributors how to recruit.

So how do you become successful at this? There are several keys to becoming good at this. They are the following:

1) The REAL Recruiting & Downline Building Begins After The Distributor Signs The Distributor Agreement

What is interesting is that most distributors in this industry have the exact opposite mentality. Once they get their prospect to sign the distributor agreement and make that first product order, they pretty much believe their job is over. They are off looking for the next recruit while their new distributor is sitting there without the slightest clue as to how to build the business.

Some distributors might actually sit down with their new recruit, develop a game plan with them and plug them into some type of company training. However, even that is not the REAL recruiting.

The best in this industry understand that you are not done recruiting someone once they sign a distributor agreement. All that means is that they have given you permission to recruit them some more.

There is a young man by the name of Todd Cahill. Most of you probably have no clue who he is. In fact, many people in the company that Todd is in have no clue who he is. However, I can tell you this, I believe that Todd Cahill will be one of the greatest network marketing distributors in the history of this industry. Do you want to know why I believe this? It is because Todd Cahill has MASTERED this concept of "real recruiting" and downline building.

Todd Cahill's organization last month recruited over 1000 BRAND NEW DISTRIBUTORS. Yes, you read correctly, that is not a mistype. His organization recruited over 1000 brand new distributors in a single month and he's only been involved in this industry for 5 years. He's not even 30 years old yet. I personally don't know of anyone his age with a team putting up those type of recruiting numbers

How did Todd's team recruit over 1000 distributors? It happened because Todd spends a HUGE portion of his working hours calling through his massive organization of tens of thousands of distributors.

Is Todd a big recruiter? Not exactly. He's probably recruited maybe 100 people personally since he's been involved. Yet he doesn't have to be a big recruiter because he knows how to recruit the distributors who are already a part of his team.

You see, just because someone joins your team, that doesn't mean that they are recruited yet. You now have to get them to do some activity. You might recruit them, but it may take you 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months, a year or more just to get that person to come out to an event or to start exposing other people to your products and business opportunity.

Simply ignoring these people is a big mistake. Some of the most successful people in this industry didn't get started immediately after joining the business.

2) Helping Your Team To Leverage Their Strengths In Downline Building

This is a big one and I see so many people completely fail at this aspect of downline building. Everyone is not going to build the business the exact same way that you build the business. Trying to force people to do activities that you might be strong and comfortable at is are surefire way to create failure in your organization.

I see distributors who are good at meeting people on their way to work, coming home from work, filling up gas at the gas station, going to the mall or supermarket, etc and exposing those people to the business. However, just because you are good at building the business that way, that doesn't mean that everybody on your team is going to be good at building the business that way.

Case in point, I have NEVER personally recruited someone that I met during the course of my daily activity. It is not anywhere close to being one of my strong points. I am a shy person naturally and talking to some stranger at the mall and trying to pique their interest about my network marketing business is not a skill set that I have effectively mastered as of yet.

So the way I look at it, I can either try to get better at something that I'm not good at. Or I can take something that I'm good at and see if I can apply it to downline building.

I am good at talking to people I don't know over the phone. I have a call center background so it is a skill that I have developed after years of experience. I am also good at marketing over the internet. My full time business is a marketing and consulting business and the large majority of my clients are small business owners that I help market their businesses in some way, shape or form over the internet.

So I decided that instead of trying to become good at something that I'm not good at, I would focus on taking what I'm already good at and looking for ways to apply it to my network marketing business.

As a result, I l have an organization of hundreds of distributors in over 33 states in the United States. I have done this all on a part time basis and quite frankly I have not been anywhere as consistent as I should have been or could have been. It's scary to think what type of results I would have produced had I been consistent over the last several years.

How did I do this? Because I made a conscious decision to find another way to build the business that leverages MY strengths instead of trying to build the business in a way that leverages my weaknesses.

Since my strengths are the phone and the internet, the large majority of my personal recruits have come from people that have responded to some type of advertisment and people who I have met over the internet. I have also recruited a lot of people that I know personally, which I assume is because the people that know me actually like me and trust me, which helps.

3) Plugging Your Team Into A System That Makes Downline Building Easier

If you want to build a team that grows rapidly, you have to plug your team into a system. Many of us have different philosophies about how we build a network marketing business. Therefore, if you want your team to be able to duplicate recruiting without your involvement, it is a requirement that you plug each of your distributors into a system that teaches, systematizes and simplifies the process for them.

What makes up a good system? It should be something that anybody can do and it should be something that can be plugged into by anybody anywhere.

Some examples of different components of a system include the following:

a) A local opportunity meeting
b) A local business training
c) An opportunity conference call
d) A training conference call
e) A team website and/or blog
f) Tools that do a full presentation for your distributor
g) 3 Way Calls between a prospect a distributor and an experienced distributor

When you have an effective system, your team can grow without your involvement. This is what you want to happen and when this does happen, that's when you know that you have mastered the art and science of downline building.

Blastoff Network - Viral Marketing Meets Network Marketing

2009-09-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

Is the future of network marketing viral marketing? A Dallas Texas based company known as Blastoff Network is about to find out.

Network marketing is a powerful business model. According to a recent survey done by http://www.businessforhome.org they have documented 1500 people that have earned in excess of $25,000 in a single month. So there is no question that network marketing is a great way for the average family to create wealth.

However, there are some challenges as well. For instance, it does require an initial investment to get started. What if the prospect truly doesn't have the start up fee? Should they be excluded from an opportunity to change their financial circumstances simply because they have fell upon hard times?

What about prospects who simply don't have the time? Trying to get referrals to work through these people can be rather difficult. They might not be willing to share their contacts with you.

What Blastoff Network has developed is a platform that may very well address many of the biggest challenges network marketing distributors face. Their strategy may literally revolutionize how network marketing is done.

So how does viral marketing work? While network marketing is a form of viral marketing, in this case, I am particularly referring to some of the strategies that internet based companies use to promote themselves automatically similar to how a virus works.

A virus in an ideal environment simply replicates itself repeatedly. One virus becomes 2. 2 becomes 4. 4 becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, 16 becomes 32. Soon you have a massive infection and there is almost nothing you can do about it.

The same holds true for a viral marketing campaign. The campaign is able to easily replicate itself because people quickly and easily share the message with others. In no time, it goes from a few people knowing about it to millions of people knowing about it.

One of the best examples of viral marketing is the email website hotmail.com. The way it got started was very simple. You signed up for a free email account. At the bottom of every email you send out, hotmail promoted its services. Some of your email recipients also signed up for a free email account. The cycle continues.

First off, you do need to understand that no matter what you do there is no guarantee that any viral marketing campaign is going to be successful. A lot has to go in your favor. However, if you are the originator of a campaign that goes viral, you can set yourself up to make an absolute fortune.

There are two key elements that can make a viral campaign successful. The first is you have to offer something of value for free. YouTube is a perfect example. The website allows users to upload videos for free. Try hosting videos on your own web server and you will see how valuable this service is. If your video gets lots of traffic, the bandwidth fees alone could be in the hundreds of dollars a month.

The second element is you need to have a very easy way for people to share it with others. Facebook is a good example. As soon as you create a Facebook account, they ask you if you would like to import your email address book to search for friends on the network. Those friends in your address book that are not on the network get an invitation to join Facebook. When they join, they too have the ability to import their email address book quickly and easily. The cycle continues.

Unfortunately there has never been a legitimate viral marketing campaign with a financial incentive. Gift letters are a perfect example of viral marketing and can expand rapidly. However, they are considered illegal ponzi schemes and if you get caught promoting or starting one you can go to jail.

You may have remembered the chain letter in which Bill Gates was supposedly giving people money to forward an email to their friends. Millions of people got that email.

What if a network marketing business was able to give its distributors access to some of the same tools some of these successful viral marketing campaigns used? The results could be staggering!

Several companies have already done this with some success. For instance, Efusion is a network marketing company that is promoting a viral Facebook application that others are sharing on Facebook. ChatToText had a lot of success promoting on Facebook until they were shut down for violating Facebook's Terms of Services.

However, there are still several challenges that need to be addressed before we see a network marketing company use viral marketing to drive it into critical mass. I'm talking about the levels like an Avon or an Amway, where the company is close to or doing double digit billions of dollars in annual revenue.

How do you deal with prospects who don't have the money to get started? What about prospects who claim they don't have time to build a network marketing business? What about distributors who are already involved in another network marketing business? Most distributors know that the key to wealth in network marketing is to build one network marketing business.

What if you were able to offer an opportunity that was free to get started? I'm not talking about an opportunity that's free but then you have to buy product. I'm not talking about an opportunity that's free but if you want to earn overrides you have to buy product. I'm talking about an opportunity that was truly free to get started with no strings attached?

What if there was a financial incentive attached to that free opportunity? A financial incentive where you can help people simplify what they are already doing and save money at the same time? What if there was no financial requirement to be able to enjoy that financial incentive? Meaning you didn't have to qualify by making a minimum product order? If someone in your network buys, you get paid whether you buy or not?

What if you were able to offer a tool similar to Facebook or Twitter that makes it easy for someone to share the opportunity with their contacts by importing their email address book. That would eliminate the "I don't have the time" excuse, wouldn't it?

What if you offered something of value for free. Something that is so valuable even other network marketers would want it even if they weren't involved in your business opportunity? They would sign up for it.

I believe the product offered by Blastoff Network provides all of these elements and more!

Now here is the clicker. Remember the example that I gave with hotmail where at the bottom of each and every email sent on its servers, there was a link promoting people to get a hotmail email address?

What if the network marketing company that you are a part of struck a deal with hotmail at the beginning when they were first getting started? In addition to a link to hotmail, they also included a link to that network marketing company's website. What if every distributor in your company with a hotmail account, when they sent out an email, the link went to their distributor website where the person who clicks on it would sign up with them?

What if that distributors friends, family and contacts who signed up for a hotmail account, when they sent out an email, if they were not in your network marketing company, the link in their emails was your distributor website? As well as the people that signed up from their contacts. And their contacts? And their contacts? And so on and so forth forever and ever?

You would literally have people joining your team every month who you didn't even know all because you gave away free email accounts and helped your friends and family do the same!

This is exactly what Blastoff Network is doing. I know people paying $500 to get started in network marketing companies that offer what Blastoff Network is going to offer for free. So there will be a lot of people who sign up to join the network.

However, those who are distributors with Blastoff's partner company are really going to be able to benefit. When all of their contacts and their contacts and so forth sign up and join the network for free, they will receive free advertising for their products and business opportunity in a manner very similar to what I described with the above hotmail scenario.

To learn more about this revolutionary new platform that Blastoff Network has developed, check out these free Blastoff Network videos.

If this explodes I predict that you will see other network marketing companies flock to this business model. They will all begin to strike alliances with viral internet companies so that their distributors can capitalize on this new business model. This could literally explode the concept of network marketing.

How To Deal With MLM Distributors Trying To Recruit You

2009-09-08T18:24:00.002-04:00

If you have been involved in MLM you are likely to encounter a distributor from another MLM company trying to recruit you into their opportunity. There are several different types of people that you may encounter, each using a number of different types of strategies to recruit you.

Below I am going to list some of the most common different strategies that I have encountered as well as the rebuttal that I give to people who try to recruit me with these strategies.

Strategy #1 - "The Prelaunch Approach" This is a very common one. The distributor tells you that they just got involved in a company that is currently in prelaunch. This company is suppose to be the next big thing. They will tell you that you need to get in right now on the "ground floor" while the company is in prelaunch because once the company launches everyone who is in beforehand will make a lot of money.

My Rebuttal - I'm not interested in getting involved with a ground floor company. Most new companies fail within the first 5 years. What I'm interested in is to be involved in a rock solid proven company that is participating in a ground floor industry like I'm currently involved in right now.

Strategy #2 - "The Heavy Hitter Joining Us Approach" This is also a very common one. The distributor tells you that "So and So" who is a heavy hitter in the MLM industry is leaving his existing company and joining this company. They might even go as far as to say that some of the leaders in your company are taking a look at their company. The premise is that since this heavy hitter is joining, the company must be good.

The Rebuttal - "So and So" has no impact on my income potential. First off, he or she probably got a special deal that you and I don't know about. Secondly, I already have great leadership and mentorship in so that I don't have to chase behind some heavy hitter who I don't personally have a relationship with.

Strategy #3 - "The fake prospect approach" With this approach the distributor pretends that he or she is a prospect for your business. Right when it is time to sign up, they hit you with the pitch about their opportunity.

The Rebuttal - The reason why I contacted you is because you indicated you were interested in my opportunity. Is that still the case or were you really interested in just pitching me with your opportunity?

Strategy #4 - "The comp plan review or the opportunity review" With this approach the distributor agrees to take a look at your opportunity (or comp plan) if you would be willing to take a look at their opportunity (or comp plan). The distributor will then show you why their opportunity or comp plan is better than yours so that you will sign up with them.

The Rebuttal - I'll ask them a simple question. If I sign up a customer that purchase $100 worth of products how much money will I make? In most opportunities it's going to be anywhere from $1 to maybe $50 max. Or, you won't make anything because the opportunity's minimum product price is like $1000. I will then reply, in my business opportunity on a membership that's $35.95 a month I earn a $207 commission. So why would I switch to your opportunity where I have to make a higher priced sale to make less money?

Now that rebuttal may or may not work for you depending on what your opportunity is. If it doesn't work for you, simply respond "well there's more to a business opportunity than the compensation plan and the facts of the company. A huge contributor to your success is the level of upline support and the relationships that are established. I already have proven relationships with leaders in my company. There is no guarantee that I'm going to get the same level of support if I switch over to you company so we would be just wasting our time reviewing each other's program.

Strategy #5 - "The Increase Your Success Approach" With this approach they will tell you that your upline is lying to you, or holding back from you and so on. They promise to reveal the secrets that will allow you to make $10,000 a month in your current opportunity. Or they might promise to show you how to start recruiting 10-20 people a week. However, the catch is they want to sell you on some high priced training program and eventually recruit them into your opportunity.

The Rebuttal - My first question would be "are you making $10,000 a month" or "are you recruiting 10-20 people a week?" If the answer is no (and 9 times out of 10 it will be), then my response will be "So how can you teach me to do something that you currently aren't doing?

If they do say yes, I will ask them what opportunity they are with. 9 times out of 10 it won't be mine, so I will say "Ok great, give me the names of the distributors in my current opportunity who are producing those types of results with your program. After I verify that this is the case I would be more than happy to consider your program." You won't ever have to consider it because they will not be able to produce that for you.

Strategy #6 - "The You Can Do This Also Approach" With this approach the distributor will try to sell you on the fact that you can do their opportunity at the same time alongside of the opportunity that you are currently doing.

The Rebuttal - I have looked at many of the success stories in my existing opportunity and what I noticed is that not a single person has ever created long term success building more than one opportunity at a time. Every last success story that I have seen in my opportunity, the person or couple was building my opportunity exclusively. Why would I deviate from what the successful people are doing?

Or regardless of what strategy you get you can use this simple rebuttal. You can say, "do me a favor, check this out" and then send them right to this website. They will read this article and get the point.

So for those of you who were sent to this website as well as those of you who want to know how to recruit MLM distributors, here is how you do it.

Develop a real relationship with them. Don't treat them like a recruit. Treat them like a friend. Don't try all of the training tactics that you have been taught on recruiting. We are getting the same training so we know what you are doing already and it doesn't work on us.

At some point in the future if the time is right, you won't have to recruit that MLM distributor. That distributor will come to you.

In the meantime, you need some strategies that will give you some real prospects to talk to. I recommend that you take a look at my Endless Stream of Prospects free report.

Four Levels of MLM Recruiting On Facebook

2009-09-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

There are four levels of MLM recruiting on Facebook. The good news is you don't ever have to progress beyond level one in order to be able to use this as a powerful strategy for building your MLM business.

However, those distributors that can master all four levels often find the recruiting process much easier and less frustrating.

Let's examine the four levels of recruiting on Facebook!

Level #1 - Hunting: The first level of recruiting on Facebook is hunting. As a hunter, you basically use Facebook as a tool to meet new people. You do this by finding friends with similar interests, building relationships with them one on one and when the time is right, piquing their interest about your business opportunity.

We have recruited a number of distributors into my organization using level 1 recruiting so it is a very effective strategy. In fact, the large majority of the distributors that joined my organization as a result of a social networking website like Facebook came from the hunting approach.

Level #2 - Fishing: The second level of recruiting on Facebook is fishing. As a fisher, you basically use Facebook as a tool to attract people to you. You do this by placing bait throughout the Facebook network. Your goal is to make the bait enticing enough that a prospect who may be interested in your business opportunity to actually request information from you.

An example of fishing is updating your status with a message to attract potential prospects. One time I updated my status to say "My company is looking for people interested in earning extra income working 4-6 hours a week." I had a number of people send me a message requesting more information.

Level #3 - Attraction Marketing: The third level of recruiting on Facebook is attraction marketing. This is a more advanced form of fishing. Like fishing you put out bait to attract people to your business. However, with attraction marketing, you use more advanced bait that demonstrates your expertise and how you can help someone.

For example, let's say you are an attorney or a legal professional. You can write notes on your Facebook profile or create videos that offer information that would be of value to others in your profession. Then place a call to action for additional information, but make sure that information ties to your MLM business in some way. Some people will take the call to action and now you have a hot prospect for your business.

Level #4 - Celebrity Marketing: This is the fourth and highest level of recruiting on Facebook. Very few people ever reach this level. However, if you are fortunate enough to be one of those few people, it can be a very powerful tool for helping you to build your MLM business.

Celebrities have a lot of influence. This is why companies pay them millions of dollars to endorse their products. Well you can become a celebrity on Facebook by building a massive following of others who are interested in what you have to offer. By doing so people will come to respect you so much that they will follow anything you endorse just like they do for celebrities in real life.

So these are the four levels of recruiting on Facebook. My question to you is what level of recruiter are you right now and what level of recruiter do you want to be?

A Time Management Strategy For Network Marketing Distributors

2009-09-01T18:25:00.002-04:00

I just came across a great time management strategy for network marketing distributors. 95% of you are like me. You are building a network marketing business on a part time basis.

You probably have a job that you work 40 to 60 hours a week. Or, you are like me and you have a business that you put in those kind of hours for, if not more. Most of you are probably married and many of you probably have children.

You also have hobbies and interests that you enjoy. You also need to sleep.

So how do you find the time to build your network marketing business?

Do you abandon your family and tell them "I'll spend time with you when this business starts making money?" That's a great way to have your kids hate you and to have your husband or wife ready to divorce you. I posted a little quote I came up with about divorce on twitter. I said "Divorce is like getting an amputation with no health insurance and no anesthesia." Not a good idea if it can be avoided.

What about cutting your sleep down from the 7 1/2 to 8 hours that you are suppose to get down to 6, 5, or even 4 hours? You may not realize this but when you don't get the proper amount of sleep, you are actually LESS productive not MORE! The reason why is because you can't focus and concentrate like you need to and you get less done as a result. So I want you to get your sleep.

What about abandoning your hobbies and interest? That's also not a good idea either. Your hobbies and interest are what makes you interesting. They are also a great way for you to find commonality with other people, which help your recruiting efforts.

Now they shouldn't take up ALL of your time. I mean, come on if you're at the bowling alley, on the golf course or playing video games EVERY NIGHT for HOURS at a time, you're probably not going to build a successful network marketing business. However, I believe taking some time to engage in your hobbies and interests is very healthy and actually helps you to be more productive when it's time to work.

So what should you do if you are very busy and are pressed for time to build your business?

Eric Worre spoke about this on his blog yesterday and I think that he answers this question better than anyone else that I've ever heard answer this question. I highly recommend that you take a look at the below video and see what he says.

If you want to participate in the discussion, check out his blog post entitled Time Management Secrets of the Top Achievers

The TRUTH About Network Marketing Success

2009-08-28T15:04:00.002-04:00

Today I want to talk to you about the truth about network marketing success. If you are a regular reader to this blog, this is not one of these posts that you want to skip over. In this post I have captured some significant insights that if you take them and apply them, they can really help you get over the hump and take your business to the next level.

I'm going to highlight some of the biggest misconceptions and show you how to overcome them so that you can create success in your business that you only dreamed was possible.

While I wish I could take credit for these concepts, I cannot. While I have been significantly more successful than the average network marketing distributor, I am on the journey just like you are. What I have been fortunate enough to experience is being able to associate with people who have achieved incredible levels of success in this industry.

So let's highlight the three biggest misconceptions...

1. All I have to do is...

Whenever you start uttering these words you are setting yourself up for a letdown. In business it is almost NEVER as easy as it seems. Everything seems so simple when you are looking at the compensation plan for the first time.

"All you got to do is recruit 3 people, help them recruit 3, help those get their 3, etc..."

Or the other deception is when you get started and you are recruiting in your warm market. You start to sign a lot of people up because you have a reputation and you are able to capitalize on relationships that you have cultivated over the years. However, once your warm market runs out and you have to move to the cold market, it's a whole new ballgame!

So don't set yourself up for a disappointment because of unrealistic expectations!

2. I'm going to wait until I start making money and then I will...

This is a very common one. I see this all the time across the industry. The problem that people who have this philosophy don't seem to understand is that whatever comes after the "then I will" is probably what they need to be doing before they start making money. For example...

"When I start making money, then I will have a better attitude."

"When I start making money, then I will go to my company convention."

"When I start making money, then I will start buying those books and tapes."

"When I start making money, then I will buy tools for my business."

It just doesn't work that way. You won't make money if you don't have a good attitude first. You won't make money if you don't go to the company convention. You won't make money if you don't start buying those books and tapes. You won't make money if you don't buy tools for your business.

3. Needing to know everything about everything...

This one killed me! Have you ever taking one of those personality profiles? The most common one that I've seen in network marketing is the colors. There are four colors that describe four personality traits. They are as follows...

Red - Results motivated
Blue - Fun motivated
Green - Facts motivated
Yellow - Relationships motivated

I am a combination of red and green, which can be a very powerful yet very dangerous combination in a network marketing business. The red in me wants results right away as quickly as possible. The green in me wants to know everything about everything.

It took a long time, but I have very recently come to accept the fact that it is impossible to know everything about everything. I know understand that sometimes you are going to have to just take the best action that you can think of at this point in time and you will figure it out as you go along.

Practically every distributor that I know personally that has achieved network marketing success understand this. One of my mentors likes to joke when I ask certain questions that we aren't trying to calculate the trajectory of a rocket ship flying to the moon!

The bottom line is the series of events that are going to trigger the biggest portions of your success are events that you simply cannot predict and plan out. That's why it is important that you just stay engaged in the activity, be consistent, be persistent, and constantly engage in personal development. If you do those things, everything else will work itself out.

To conclude, let me share with you some stories of how some very successful leaders were recruited into the industry.

One distributor exposed someone at his job. They weren't interested. The distributor asked for referrals and they referred him to someone else. This 2nd person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else. The 3rd person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else.

The 4th person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else. The 5th person was interested in the product but wasn't interested in the opportunity. She referred him to her son. The 6th person, her son was interested and now makes over a half a million dollars a year!

A couple met another couple at the mall and gave them a CD. They listened to it, liked what they heard. They invited that couple out to a meeting. The couple came to the meeting, got excited and signed up. It took them 90 days just to sign up 1 person.

They struggled for 18 months but eventually hit the leadership position in the company. They made a good full time income for several years, eventually got it up to a six figure income. However one day something just clicked and over a 5 year period they went from making $100,000 a year to possibly making $100,000 this month!

By the way, that original couple that recruited them? They were terminated by the company for unethical business practices.

A distributor in California called a business opportunity lead in North Carolina. The guy in North Carolina signs up but doesn't do a whole lot. What he does do though is share it with his brother. His brother signs up, goes to work and in 72 days hits the leadership position in the compensation plan.

His brother doesn't last though, but he did sign up a guy, who signed up another guy who was a carpenter. That carpenter signed up one of his clients, who was an assistant Pastor at a church.

That assistant Pastor has earned a full time income for the last 4 and a half years, has an organization of thousands of distributors in over 35 states and is closing in on a six figure income. By the way, none of those other people are in the business anymore.

That's the truth about network marketing. If you apply it and are willing to stick around long enough to make it happen, success is just a matter of time for you. However, if you continue to fight it, you will continue to struggle and eventually you will quit.

Don't be another casualty in this industry. Embrace the truth about this industry!

USANA compensation plan

2009-08-27T15:41:00.003-04:00

Today we are going to examine the compensation plan of USANA Health Sciences.

If you would like more information how how network marketing compensation plans work in general, take a look at this post entitled how to evaluate a network marketing compensation plan.

USANA is a health and wellness company. They offer a variety of health & nutritional products as well as personal care products. They also offer a business opportunity that allows you to build a distributorship in the United States as well as several other countries.

The company was founded in 1992 and is over 16 years old. That is very important because you want to align yourself with a company that is well established. Many people believe you need to be involved in a start up company to make big money in this industry. You don't want to be in a start up company because most of those companies fail.

So how does the USANA compensation plan work?

The first way you get paid is in the form of retail sales. As a distributor with USANA you are able to purchase their products at their wholesale distributor prices and then sell those products at retail prices to your customers. While this isn't an exact number, you can expect a difference of about 20% between the wholesale price that you pay and the retail price that you sell the product to your customers.

The start up fee to become a distributor is $49.95 which is very inexpensive. However, you have to remember that you will also need to purchase products, so your product purchase needs to be factored into the picture.

The second way you get paid is in the form of commissions generated based on the purchases made by customers and distributors in your downline. Customers that go on autoship (ordering a minimum amount of product a month) as well as distributors who join the business become a part of your organization.

The amount of income you earn is dependent upon the amount of sales volume your organization is able to generate. Each product is assigned a point value known as SV. On average 1 SV = $1.20 in product purchases.

There are two options as far as your initial product order to get started in the business. You can get started by opening up one business center with a product order that equals 150 SV (about $180 in product). Or you can get started by opening up three business centers with a product order that equals 450 SV (about $540 in product).

You will also need to have a minimum order of at least 100 SV a month (about $120 in product) if you have one business center or if you have three business centers but you only want to get paid on the first one. If you have three business centers and you want to get paid on all three, you will need to have a minimum order of at least 200 SV a month (about $240 in product)

USANA operates a binary compensation plan. This means that you get two lines of sponsorships in which your distributors can be placed under. As both lines of sponsorships accumulate a certain amount of SV, this triggers commissions to be paid to you.

When both the left side of one of your business centers as well as the right side of one of your business centers generates at least 250 GSV (this means the total amount of SV orders made by all of the distributors within that business center), you earn 40 commission points. This is the equivalent to $40 in commissions in the USA but may be another amount depending on what country the orders come from.

When you accumulate 500 GSV you earn 100 commission points. 1,000 GSV equals 200 commission points. 2000 = 400. 3000 = 600. 4000 = 800. It maxes out at 5000 = 1000. Commissions are paid out on a weekly basis.

So if you max out your business center, meaning your team is doing over $5000 a week on both sides of your business center ($10,000 minimum), you can earn up to 1000 commission points a week or 4000 commission points a month. In the US, that's $4000 a month in commissions from the orders placed by people on your team.

It is significantly more profitable to get started with 3 business centers than one. The reason why is it's kind of like getting to count the same volume twice and getting paid twice. With 3 business centers, you have one business center occupied by you. Both the left side and the right side is also occupied by you. You can then build both sides of the 2nd (left) and the 3rd (right).

Therefore, you get paid when ANY of the three business centers reach at least 250 in commissions. In my opinion, it doesn't make any sense coming in at anything less than 3 business centers. Otherwise, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

If one of your business centers has more points than the other (i.e. left side has 500 and right side has 250), the additional points are carried over to the next week. Points continued to get carried over until the other side catches up so that they can be utilized.

Preferred customers can also be added to your business centers. You don't earn retail commissions on sales to preferred customers but you do earn points to count towards your business center income.

However one disadvantage to USANA's binary is you have to place preferred customers on the left or right side. I've seen other binary plans where your preferred customers are automatically added to the side that has the least amount of points. That feature helps you earn commissions faster in other binary plans and USANA lacks this feature.

Once you max out one of your business centers, you can re-enter your own downline with another business center and begin building this new business center. You can do this twice per business center so technically there really is no limit on your income, because even if you max out the business center, you can always start another one.

Keep in mind that because everyone only gets a limited amount of business centers, those that recruit more than 2-4 people will place those additional recruits under the business center of one of the distributors in their organization. This allows you to potentially earn income from the efforts of your upline. You can do the same with your downline.

Now that you understand how the USANA compensation plan works, let's see how it matches up with our compensation evaluation points.

1. How easy is it to make $500 to $1000 a month?

To earn $500 a month just from retail sales, you will need to move about $2500 a month in product. The amount of people that you are going to have to sign up a month really depends on how much product your average customer purchases from you.

Let's say your average customer purchases $100 worth a product from you at retail prices. That works out to $20 in profits. To get to $500, you will need to sign up 25 customers a month. The average distributor is not going to be signing up that many customers a month.

This means that in order to get $500 a month consistently you are going to have to rely on group volume. Group volume comes from signing up preferred customers and recruiting distributors. You will need to do 500 GSV on both sides for three weeks, plus 1000 GSV on both sides for one week to generate $500 a month if you have one business center.

With three business centers you can reach $500 a month with only 250 GSV on both sides for four weeks for your 2nd and 3rd business center. This will automatically give you 250 GSV for your first business center and produce an income of $480 a month. You can always retail some of your personal product to get the additional $20 to equal $500 a month.

If each customer/distributor on average orders 100 SV a month, you will need approximately 50 active customers/distributors evenly distributed to generate an income of $500 a month. Impossible? Absolutely not. However, that's not something you're necessarily going to get to right away.

Therefore, I will have to say that it is difficult for the average distributor to earn $500 to $1000 a month. There are a lot of other opportunities where you can generate that type of income on a much smaller amount of customers, even if those customers aren't even involved in the business opportunity.

This is why I don't like binary compensation plans. In my opinion, they seem to reward the heavy hitter who can either recruit a ton of people quickly or someone who has the ability to bring over an entire downline from one organization to another. Those types of people can make big money in a binary plan very quickly. The average distributor though is going to struggle and see some very small checks in the beginning.

2. How much does the product cost and how much does it cost to get started as a distributor?

The product costs are about average compared to what I have seen with other health and wellness network marketing companies. The prices are a little on the high side when you compare them to similar products that are marketed through a retail business model.

However, network marketing companies tend to be able to charge higher prices for their products because distributors have the mindset that they are going to support their own business and buy from themselves.

As for whether the products are better than competing products, I have no idea. I'm certainly not a health and wellness expert. Bottom line, if you try the products and you benefit from them, great, continue to use them!

3. Is there competition for the product/service?

There is a tremendous amount of competition for USANA's products. They have to compete with other network marketing companies that offer health and wellness type products. They also have to compete with retail companies that offer similar products.

So what's the bottom line on USANA's compensation plan?

I'm not really a big fan of the compensation plan. I think other health and wellness companies offer a compensation plan that is more lucrative than USANA.

However, there is more to an opportunity than a compensation plan. The fact is USANA is a very successful proven opportunity. There are distributors that are making a significant income. The company has a lot of credibility and third party validation. They are not a start up, but a solid and stable company. You can do a LOT worst than joining USANA trust me!

So if you really enjoy the products don't let the faults in the compensation plan stop you. If you're willing to put your time in, you can create a great income with USANA. I think they are a fantastic company overall.

However, if you are not that excited about the products and you are looking for a more lucrative compensation plan, I recommend that you pass on USANA and keep on looking.

For example, in the company that I'm with, I make $414 if I signed up 2 customers for a service that only costs $35.95 a month. I don't have to place them anywhere in my organization and generate any volume. The customers fill out the application. It gets processed and I get the money wired into my bank account the next business day as we get paid daily, 5 days a week not weekly like USANA.

If I was in USANA and I signed up 2 preferred customers for a product order of $120 a month, that would equal 100 SV. Let's say I put one on the left and one on the right of my business center. It would take me 2-3 YEARS to earn that same $414 on those two customers in the USANA compensation plan.

If you are interested in more information about the company I am with, you can check out a link for the company that I believe has the best MLM compensation plan.

If you are already in USANA or you are going to join and you are interested in learning how to sign up more customers or recruit more distributors into your organization, I highly recommend you check out my web site and download my free report.

MLM Team Building by Tap Rooting

2009-08-26T14:26:00.002-04:00

There is a very powerful MLM team building concept called "tap rooting" that if you master it you will build a large, successful and duplicating organization.

When you personally sponsor a brand new distributor into your organization, it is your responsibility to make sure that you direct them to the training that they need to build their MLM business. Now you might be personally doing the training if you have been successful already or you might be directing them to a leader in your upline who is doing the training.

Let's say you are doing mlm team building training for your new distributors. What should you do with new recruit?

The first step is if your company or team has a new distributor training you should have your new recruit go through that training. There are three reasons why you want to do this...

1) It duplicates - Not every distributor can train a new distributor but every distributor can tell their new distributors "go to our team website and click on the new distributor training."

2) It exposes them to the concepts you are going to share with them - It is a lot easier to get a new distributor to do what you want them to do if when you sit down with them it is not the first time they are hearing these concepts.

3) It tests their commitment - If your new distributor won't even go to a website for training, they are not worth your time and effort.

After they have completed the new recruit mlm team building training, the next step is to schedule a game plan interview with him/her. If the new distributor is local to you, conduct the game plan live and in person. If the new distributor is long distance, conduct the game plan on the telephone.

At the game plan interview you want to find out why they are doing the business. You want to help them start making a list of prospects to talk to about your products and business opportunity.

Once you make that list, help that new distributor identify the best way to expose their prospects, whether its a in home presentation, a hotel meeting, mailing out a package with a tool, etc. Then you want to help your new distributor to begin to contact their list.

What many distributors do, (which is a big mistake, I've been guilty of this as well) is they allow their new distributor to contact their list. Your new distributor doesn't know what he or she is doing and they are likely to make mistakes that will reduce their chances of success.

As the person working with that new distributor, you should be doing most of the work and your new distributor should be doing some of the work. You shouldn't be doing all of the work for them and they shouldn't be doing all of the work themselves either.

So for instance, you might have the new recruit call their list. They might let the prospect know that they just got started in a business project that they are excited about and they want to let the prospect know what they are doing. They can then introduce the prospect to you and you can take it from there.

Also don't rely on the new recruit to follow up with their prospects on their own either. Again, the new recruit doesn't know what to do so you should make the follow up calls with your new distributor.

The goal is for you to help your new distributor sponsor their own recruit. Once that happens, you want to take their new recruit and do the exact same thing as you did with your original recruit.

This process should be repeated until you find a leader who can take over the tap rooting process for you. Once that happens, that frees up your time because now you have an organization that has duplicated your actions. That is how you do mlm team building training by tap rooting.

Recruiting Strategies From A MLM BILLIONAIRE!

2009-08-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

There aren't many people who can say that they have developed a billion dollar net worth as a direct result of building their MLM business.

One of the people who can say that they did is Art Williams.

Have you ever heard of the company Primerica? They do a couple of billion dollars a year in revenue and are one of the most successful MLM companies in the entire industry. Well, the precursor to that company was called A.L Williams and was founded by Art Williams.

Art got started in the insurance industry and was amazed at how much money he was able to make part time selling insurance while working full time as a football coach. I believe either in a one or a two year period he was able to save up $40,000 from his insurance commissions.

He then started the company A.L. Williams. That company eventually became Primerica, which was brought out by Citigroup. The money that Williams made off that sale made him a billionaire!

Anyway, here is an article that he wrote about Successful Recruiting.

In The Mind Of A Million Dollar Network Marketing Professional

2009-08-21T12:19:00.002-04:00

If you had the opportunity to ask questions from a network marketing professional that earns over one million dollars a year in this industry, what would you ask him or her?

Well myself as well as several other people in the industry had such an opportunity back in May. I didn't even know that it was recorded. However, I have discovered the recording and I have posted it right here on this website for you to review.

In this video there were a lot of great questions that were asked. Some of the topics that were covered include:

1. If you have a hour or two a day to grow a network marketing business, what should you do?

2. How to recruit other distributors who are already in network marketing?

3. What is holding you back from achieving success in this industry?

And much much more!

So take a look at this video. It's great!

MLM Companies That Do $100 Million Or More In Revenues

2009-08-20T16:32:00.002-04:00

I just checked out a very interesting article posted to Direct Selling News. This article highlights MLM Companies that do at least $100 million dollars in revenue.

The top 2 companies are of course the mighty Avon with its 5.8 million representatives and of course, Alticor Inc, which is the parent company for Amway Global.

65 companies made the list. However, what I found interesting were two things. #1) Some of the companies that made the list that I never even heard of and #2) Some of the companies that didn't make the list.

For example, the #3 company on the list is Vorwerk & Co KG, with annual revenues of 3.4 billion dollars. I have never even heard of this company, yet they are the 3rd highest revenue grossing company in the network marketing industry!

I was shocked to see that Ambit made the list. These guys are only in 3 states and yet they are doing more in revenue than a LOT of MLM companies that are in multiple countries! $197 million in revenues in less than 3 years is VERY impressive!

Now of course, revenue alone doesn't mean anything. A more important indicator of the company strength is profits. In other words, after the company pays all of its bills, including the commission checks of the distributors, pays it taxes and so on, how much money does the company have left?

Some of the companies on this list are actually LOSING millions of dollars a year when you look at their profit numbers. However, many of the companies on this list are generating millions of dollars in profits even after all their bills are paid, which is a good thing.

Some distributors will have you believe that the company profits is not important, which is silly. If your company isn't making any money, how in the world do you expect them to be able to continue to pay you? It's just like a person who lives on credit cards. Eventually, everything is going to collapse.

I was shocked that Ameriplan didn't make the list. I also thought that if Ambit made the list, surely some of the other start-ups like Send Out Cards and Worldventures would have made the list as well. Apparently, they did not. Now it doesn't mean that those companies don't make $100 million. The authors of the articles clearly admit that the list is not complete. I just thought for sure that those companies were $100 million dollar companies.

Anyway, here is the list of the $100 Million Club - MLM Companies that do $100 Million or more in revenue. Check it out and see if your company made the list!

Advanced Facebook Network Marketing Recruiting Strategies

2009-08-18T19:32:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we talked about using Facebook Group & Fan Pages to meet new prospects for your network marketing business. Today I am going to share with you a more advanced version of this strategy.

If you are willing to invest more time this advanced strategy can pay big dividends in the form of a higher quality recruit.

The more advanced version of this strategy is to create your own groups and fan pages.

Network marketing is like an adult version to the game "follow the leader." The more you are able to establish yourself as a leader, the more people there are that are going to be attracted to joining you in your network marketing business.

Establishing your own group or fan page on Facebook allows you to establish yourself as the leader and build a following. You get all of the same benefits as you do when you join groups and meet people in those groups. However, being the leader creates the perceived notion that you are an expert in the subject matter of the group.

So for instance, the gentleman that created the Robert Kiyosaki group that I referred to yesterday. If he was involved in a network marketing business and he utilized my strategy, he has the added leverage that he can use as the creator of the group.

When he makes the friend request and offers the introduction he can say "I'm the admin for the Robert Kiyosaki group that you are a part of." People are even more likely to accept a friend request from the admin of a group than just a member.

It is important that you understand the appropriate use of a group and the appropriate use of a fan page. Otherwise you might find your group or fan page removed and worst case scenario, your entire account can be de-activated.

A group can be created on whatever topic that you want. A fan page is suppose to be an official representative of the person or business entity that is represented. You cannot create a fan page on a general topic.

So for instance, you can create a group about Robert Kiyosaki. However, you cannot create a fan page about Robert Kiyosaki unless you are an official representative of Mr. Kiyosaki himself.

So the strategy you want to use is to create a group about topics that will attract ideal prospects for your network marketing business. Or you can create a group about a topic that you have a lot of interest in so that you can build rapport with others with similar interests.

If you are going to create a fan page, you should create an fan page that represents your independent distributorship for the network marketing company that you are a part of. You don't want to create a fan page that represents the actual company itself as it will get deleted and you might even get into trouble with the network marketing company you are with.

The other benefit to creating your own group or fan page is you have the ability to contact every member of your group or fan page. With a group, you can actually send them a Facebook message that goes directly to their Facebook inbox.

Many people check Facebook on their phones, so you get direct access to their telephones as the group administrator.

On a fan page, when you post a message, it gets posted to all of the fans news feed in Facebook. You also have the option to send an update to the fans, which prompts as a prompt when the fan signs in to Facebook.

If this strategy seems too advanced for you, don't worry about it. As I said yesterday you can just simply focus on the Facebook Groups & Fan Page strategy that I wrote about and that will give you more than enough prospects to talk to about your network marketing business opportunity.

MLM Recruiting Using Facebook Groups & Facebook Fan Pages

2009-08-17T16:47:00.003-04:00

Now that Facebook is the #1 social networking website on the internet, there is a growing amount of interest in mlm recruiting tips using Facebook. With over 250 million users and more growing, you could literally use this one website to address all of your prospecting needs if you know what you are doing.

However, if you don't know what you are doing, the best case scenario is that you will likely anger a number of people and draw them away from your opportunity. The worst case scenario is you can literally have your account removed from Facebook.

So what is the right way to use Facebook to attract a mlm recruit to your business? The right way is to attract prospective prospects to your business by utilizing Facebook groups and Facebook fan pages.

A Facebook group is a community of facebook users who have an interest in a particular topic. By joining the group you have the opportunity to communicate with like minded individuals who are interested in the topic that the group is about.

There are two approaches you can take towards Facebook groups. Either approach is effective and you can even use both approaches if you want.

The first approach is to identify and join groups that will have people that you believe will be a good fit for a MLM business. I have found that generally speaking the best prospect for our industry is someone who has indicated that they have an interest in improving their life or someone who is already a business owner or self employed.

Therefore, I would look for groups that are about topics that these type of people would be drawn to and/or have some type of interest in.

For example, I am a huge fan of Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best selling book "Rich Dad Poor Dad." So I did a search on Facebook to see if there are any groups dedicated to Robert Kiyosaki. Sure enough there is a group with over 3,000 members, so I joined the group.

Now as a member, I can see other members of the group. These other members are all potential prospects for my MLM business. I can click "show all" to see all of the members of the group. I can then click on their profile and see if they are someone that I would like to prospect for my business (if they show their profile to non friends.)

Let's say I find someone who I think would make a great prospect for my business. What I would do is click on the "add as friend" button. I can add them to one of my friend list categories (I have a category specifically for people that I want to prospect for my business). I can also send them a personal message.

I recommend you send them a personal message. Most people don't send personal messages so it sets you apart. I would say something to the effect of "Hi, I saw that you are a member of the Robert Kiyosaki group. I'm a big fan of his books and am looking to network with others who like his books." This way, they know how I found them and they will be more likely to accept my friend request.

Once they accept my friend request, I would post to their wall thanking them for accepting my friend request. I would then send them a personal message. If they happen to be online, I might even send them an instant message to see if I can strike a conversation with them live.

What would I talk about? Well Robert Kiyosaki's books of course! As I message back and forth with them I would start with Kiyosaki info, but my goal is to get to know them better. I want to know what they do for a living, if they are married, if they have children, what their goals are and what their interests are.

As I get to know them, there is a good chance that I will uncover a need that my network marketing business can address. Once I have built up rapport with them (this can be the same day if I'm doing instant messaging or days, or even weeks later if we are going back and forth via regular messages), I will then see if they have any interest in checking out my business.

So I might say something "I am currently involved in a business project that currently utilizes and teaches many of the principles that Robert Kiyosaki advocates. It's a great way to actually take the lessons that you are learning from the books and apply some practical application to them. It may not even be for you, but would you be interested in investigating it further to see if this would be a match for you?"

Pretty much the point is you want to use something that they are interested in and tie it to your business. While Robert Kiyosaki is a natural fit for a member of the group, that doesn't necessarily have to be the tie in. For instance, if in talking with them I know they are passionate about their kids but I know their job doesn't allow them to spend a lot of time with them, I might say "I am currently involved in a business project that is helping a lot of parents to be able to spend more time with their kids."

If they say YES, I will get their name (which I have already) and their phone number from them and then give them a call. What's great is in many cases, their number is right on their Facebook profile, so I would just confirm their number.

I would then give them a call, ask some questions first based on the concepts that are taught in the home study course Black Belt Recruiting and if I like what I hear, I will then give them my website or a pre-recorded conference call number and schedule some time to follow up.

The 2nd approach is to join groups that you have an interest in that doesn't necessarily have to have prospects that are ideal for network marketing. For instance, if you are a fan of the strategy board game RISK, there are groups on Facebook where you can connect with other fans of the game.

I would pretty much follow the same approach as I would with the other type of group.

You can use this exact same strategy for Fan Pages as well. The main difference between a group and a fan page is that a group is about specific topics and can be created by anybody. A fan page is specifically for businesses and individuals.

If you utilized this one strategy alone, you could literally have an unlimited number of people that you could prospect for your network marketing business! It works! I have recruits on my team right now that have come as a direct result of this and similar strategies from social networking web sites.

Some people in my business opportunity are amazed that I very rarely prospect people when I'm out and about like many network marketing distributors, yet I have way more prospects to expose and follow up with than they will ever have.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. However, if that's the only thing you know how to do, what happens if something happens and you can't leave your home? For instance, what if you have a major snowstorm and travel is difficult, if not impossible. If all of your prospecting is based on you going out and meeting people, you have no way of building your business during the snowstorm.

You see, I work full time from home, so the large majority of my time is spent in my house. Therefore, I needed a way to meet people from home and this strategy is a fantastic way to do just that. PLUS, it costs absolutely NOTHING to do this other than the cost that you pay for your internet access!

Tomorrow I will share with you a more advanced strategy of using Facebook Groups & Facebook Fan Pages to recruit people. However, you could literally do nothing else except this and by being consistent and persistent you will have more than enough people that you can prospect for your MLM business!

Top 10 Network Marketing Blogs

2009-08-14T13:31:00.002-04:00

Today we are going to examine the top 10 network marketing blogs as of August of 2009. Each blog is ranked based on its Alexa rating, which is an independent rating that estimates how much traffic the blog is receiving compared to other websites on the internet.

The lower your Alexa rating, the higher the amount of traffic that you are receiving.

Now some blogs are a part of the blog owner's website. Those blogs I have not considered as a part of this review. The reason why is because there's no way of knowing whether the traffic is coming from people checking out the website or whether the traffic is coming from people who are checking out the blog. I'm looking for blogs on their own domain for this review.

I'm also only including blogs that are specifically devoted to discussing network marketing. There are some blogs that mention network marketing but don't exclusively discuss it and those blogs I am not including in this review.

So with that in mind, here is each network marketing blog along with the website, the Alexa rating and some commentary about it. If there is a blog that you felt should have been listed, please post it to the comments area and the next time I do another review, I will make sure that I keep that blog under consideration in my review if it meets the criteria above.

Also, I list the Alexa rating, and in parenthesis I also list what was the Alexa rating for this blog if it made my list the last time I did this review. If the blog wasn't on my list, I listed n/a.

So here they are in order from 10 to 1...

10. MLM 10 Week Challenge - 499,059 (n/a) Authored by Gavin Mountford, the purpose of this blog is to teach you how to go from a follower to a leader in the MLM industry. With a focus on attraction marketing and building the business using the internet, Gavin offers a content rich blog on a wide variety of different topics.

9. New School Network Marketing - 400,199 (n/a) Authored by Kurt Henninger, this blog features cutting edge video training on how to use the internet to generate leads for your network marketing business.

8. New School Marketing by Kim Klaver - 320,112 (205,131) Authored by Kim Klaver a very successful former network marketing distributor, she shares her insights about the industry in general as well as how to build your business with a product first focus. Very witty commentary and always a good read.

7. Home Business Blogs - 266,778 (n/a) Authored by Ben Fitts, a successful distributor in the SendOutCards business opportunity, he offers some great content on a number of topics about building a network marketing business. He specializes in helping distributors to find their niche in network marketing.

6. MLM Blog Expert - 251,164 (413,983) Author by Jaz Lai from Singapore, he provides some great content on internet network marketing. In particular, if you want to learn how to build a list of prospects and distributors that you can make money from and recruit to, he's your guy!

5. MLM Blog - 129,694 (229,514) Authored by Ty Tribble this is one of the oldest blogs on the internet dedicated to network marketing. What I like about Ty is that he's not afraid to talk about controversal topics (just like I'm not afraid to give a company a bad review in my compensation plan review series) and he offers spirited commentary on many of those topics. An excellent blog.

4. Network Marketing Pro - 94,948 (n/a) Authored by million dollar earner Eric Worre, this blog is a video series that teaches network marketing distributors how to become professionals in the industry. With great commentary as well as a series of interviews with other million dollar earners and professional development speakers, this is a must add to your blog rolls!

3. Renegade Professional Blog - 49370 (n/a) Co-authored by Ann Sieg and Mike Klingler they, (along with blog #2) are the leaders of the new school attraction network marketing business model. This blog teaches you internet marketing concepts and how to apply them to building your network marketing business.

2. Magnetic Sponsoring - 45549 (n/a) Authored by Mike Dillard, who many refer to as the "father of the internet network marketing movement." this blog focuses on the product line of Mike's magnetic sponsoring principles where he teaches you how to attract prospects to you and your network marketing business.

1. MLM Business Opportunities Blog - 24913 (35,701) Authored by Dale Carson, this blog continues to dominate the Alexa ratings and claim the number one spot. This blog serves as a good snapshot as to what is going on in the network marketing industry.

MLM Leads - Do They Work In A MLM Business

2009-08-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

This video discusses the topic of mlm leads and whether they are appropriate for building a mlm business.

There are a lot of people who have questions on this topic. Some people only use MLM leads and teach everyone on their team to use them. Some people refuse to use them and bar everyone on their team from using them. Most people are somewhere in the middle of this equation.

On this video I talk about this subject. I analyze whether a distributor should be using this type of prospecting method to build their particular business opportunity. If you have always wondered what the role of this type of program should be, I highly recommend that you check out this video.

In addition, there are a lot of people who are using the attraction network marketing or the internet network marketing business model. One of the challenges to this business model is for most people it takes a while of creating and developing content before the flow of leads starts to come in.

I talk about this in this video as well and provide a solution for you while you wait for the leads from your internet network marketing efforts to come in.

So take a look at the video and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you are interested in more ways to have people to talk to about your MLM business, make sure you download my free network marketing report as well.